Just a quick one! I'm a manager for a high street fashion store and have worked retail for 7 years now. I have loads of stories to tell about the stupidity of customers and their delusions, but this is the most recent. I had electricians in-store last week to fix the AC. My store shuts at 8pm, so they guys turn up then and start unloading their equipment. We have high ceilings so they need to use a cherry picker. It needs to come in the front door so I open them nice and wide. The machine is halfway through, basically blocking the door, when a couple try to get in. They are both fatties, so it was a squeeze. I catch them quickly but they have already begun to browse. I had to explain we are not open, the doors were open for the cherry picker. The reply? "We will only be a few minutes." Eh, whit. It is almost 9pm, it is dark and there are no lights on in my store. No we are not open, get out. They leave, in a huff.

I work next door to a majorly giant coffee chain. One morning their toaster oven caught on fire. Everyone was evacuated. The drive thru was blocked off with traffic cones and there were two firetrucks in our tiny parking lot. It was hard to miss the chaos.

Customers STILL tried to get in the store because "the doors were open". The doors where open because the fucking firemen were extinguishing the fire!

Cars were trying to move the traffic cones away from the drive thru and a few customers on foot were lining up in front of the building that was deemed unsafe all for their morning cup of joe.

We had smoke billowing into our store...very thick smoke covering every inch of the ceiling...5 firefighters in full gear with fucking AXES walking around the kitchen, poking at the ceiling. 3 fire trucks, cop cars and an ambulance "Are y'all still making orders?"

We had an attempted robbery a few years ago. One of our salespeople noticed what was going on at the register, and ran up and tackled the guy (fairly stupid, but still). Two other guys held the robber down while I called the police.

The police came quickly, and obviously, we weren't ringing up any customers. I had a guy who witnessed the whole thing come up to me while the police were handcuffing the robber and ask where he could check out. He was infuriated when I told him we couldn't use the register at that particular moment.

I think that for some people it wouldn't matter if a plane crashed into the store and it was on fire. They would still insist on getting their Big Gulp or their Coolatta or whatever other stupid shit they absolutely have to have, becuase they're such a SPESHUL SNOWFLAKE.

I'm willing to bet that somewhere out there, someone managed to weasel their way into some new store that wouldn't be ready to open for a few weeks.

Employee: Ma'am, our store is not open yet. We won't be open for another week.

Customer: Oh that's ok, I'll only be a few minutes.

Employee: Ma'am, as you can see, we're still in the process of setting things up. We don't have our registers set up, and even if we did, there is no merchandise in the store that we could sell you.

Customer: Oh, that's all right. I'm only here for a few things. wanders off, comes back Don't you guys have any table lamps?

Employee: No. We do not have ANYTHING in stock yet, because we are not open, and we will not be open for another week, as the sign on the doors you forced open would have informed you had you bothered to read it. Please leave.

I had this happen at an old job once. We were remodeling a section of the store so it was roped off had under construction signs up and was surrounded by curtains.

A angry customer comes up to me about a product that is not properly labeled and how are they supposed to buy it and blah blah blah. I apologize and as them to show me the item and I will find them the information. I follow the customer and they push aside the curtain and point to something and say that is the item

... I had this happen with several customers, almost in the exact same way you described.

We relocated our store to a new space in our mall in May. We had a couple of shelves of shoes moved over into the new store with the store 99.5% empty. Our new glass doors weren't installed right so they were left unlocked while the techs worked on them.

Couldn't help but be stunned seeing person after person try to come into a store that is NOWHERE NEAR open and you'd have to be a complete imbecile not to notice.

I even had a guy who came in and began "browsing". I cannot for the life of me understand what his thought process is, or how you could possibly require an employee telling you to gtfo for you to notice that the store is completely empty. O_o

I really don't understand people. A couple of months ago, I noticed that one of the major craft stores had recently located one of its stores a couple of minutes away from my house. Yay! I needed wanted yarn, and the nearest place I could get it was a 15 minute drive from me if traffic was good. I pulled up to the store, and they didn't appear to be open yet. So I went back home, went to the store locator on their website, and found out that that store wouldn't be opening for another two weeks. So I made a mental note to myself to not go back to that store for two weeks, because if I did it wouldn't be open and I wouldn't be able to buy anything. Simple as that.

And then they finished their remodel ahead of schedule and opened ahead of schedule, and it was everything I had dreamed it would be and more.

One morning at our store we had a customer attempt to walk in before we opened. We leave the front doors unlocked (but turned off so they won't open automatically) because they are the only way into the store (no special employee entrance). This customer pulls the doors open, steps over out gate that was partially open to allow associates into the store, and doesn't realize we aren't open yet until he reaches the entrance (we have a vestibule with a separate entrance door and exit door) and it won't open. He turns around and leaves.

Lol, I can top that actually. In my hometown we had a woman get stabbed (I think, been a while, might have been shot) and she crawled into a gas station where people literally stepped over her to buy stuff. It was all on camera and I believe she actually died before anyone even called 911.

This has happened to me many times. In 2001-2003 I worked for a chain of bookstores setting up their temporary (Pop-up) stores around the country. EVERYWHERE I went, people would try to come in before we were open, and it was only 10 days to when I took the lease and when I opened the store. No signs up yet, maybe some books in, and a crew of temps/contractors doing repairs and setting up. But in almost all cases, I would have to leave the front doors unlocked for fire code reasons while I had workers in the building. I'd also set up a big easel just inside the doors with giant 3-inch letters proclaiming who we are and when we open.

People would give zero fucks, shop anyway, then get mad when they couldn't find a register-- BECAUSE WE AREN'T OPEN.

"can't you just take my money? Here, I have cash."

"NO. I am not open. I do not have registers. I do not have an occupancy permit. I do not have the correct licenses to do business in this location yet. NO."

Where i used to work we were having the floor relaid, so cordoned off the entire shop except the first aisle to where the tills were (at a petrol station, so people could still buy fuel, smokes and chocolate. That was pretty much it). Despite cones, tape, workmen and a ripped up floor, we still had people climbing over all that to get a bottle of wine.

And then they act like your big remodel, which when it's finished will make the store nice and pretty for the customers, is being done solely to inconvenience them right now. Like somehow you just knew they were going to come in for a bottle of wine that evening, and you personally scheduled the store's remodel around them coming in.

A Dunkin Donuts just opened in my neighborhood last Thursday. Big pink and orange signs in the window saying "COMING SOON!" You could look into the windows and see the place was only half-tiled, had no counter, etc.

This Dunkin is directly on the corner of a large intersection, so I stood right next to it many times while waiting to cross the street. I can't tell you how many times I saw this happen:

Person tries to open the door, unsuccessfully

Person peers into the shop, obviously seeing the place is still under construction

Person bangs on the door a few times, possibly saying something like, "Hey, anybody in there?" or "Let me in!" if there were contractors working inside

It has. I own a liquor store, and before we opened 3 years ago, was doing some remodeling and leaving doors open for the fresh air. We had some stock we had bought from the previous owner, and was just sitting in boxes. Had a few people come in and get huffy that we wouldn't sell them anything, despite the fact that we had not gotten our Liquor License yet and didn't even have any kind of register or coolers.

One of them was so bad we got a No Trespassing order from the police. Yes, we banned someone before we ever opened for business.

I have noticed that people go crazy when they can't get there alcohol.

There is a liquor store by me, where if you don't block the entrance driveway the traffic light doesn't recognize a car and never turns green. I have seen some people go completely nuts because they had to wait like 90 seconds to pull in.

Ugh, I'll bet they didn't understand that if you sold them even just one small bottle of booze before you got your liquor license in order, you could risk losing your job and the business being shut down before it even opened. That sort of stuff is taken really seriously, and one person's drinking habit is not worth your job, or the dissolution of the business. But no, that special snowflake's gotta have his stuff!

They understand nothing. After posting that I had a regular customer come in and get a 24 OZ can of beer, and then drove around back to chug it. When he came back in later, I told him if I ever saw him do that again I would call the police. His response, "But my girlfriend doesn't like me drinking!" Because your worthless, unemployed, welfare ass having a girlfriend should be more important to me than the HUGE fine I could get for allowing people to drink on my property.

I should add his girlfriend is pregnant with someone else's kid........

And then you have places like my college town, where 90% of the bars served underage. Hell, there's even a bar or two that caters almost exclusively to the underage crowd. Like, once you turn 21 you stop going there because you don't want to associate yourself with all those stupid drunk kids anymore.

There's a lot of poverty in the town, and the bars bring in a ton of money, so the police typically turn a blind eye to all the underage drinking going on. Every year, they do a few token raids, and a few bars get in trouble, but it's not a serious enough threat for them to enforce the underage drinking laws. When I went to school there, it seemed that the core group of bars was always changing names and changing hands. I read somewhere on another thread that in certain cases that if your bar makes enough money from serving underage, it's actually cheaper to get caught, pay the fine, close the business and reopen it under a new name than it is to refuse to serve underage patrons. It's unfortunate that stuff like this happens, when in other areas liquor license enforcement is so strict that you could very well get fined for your customer's stupid decision to drink on your property.

Anyway, this guy sounds like a real winner. I'm sure he was on his way to see his girlfriend, because if he wasn't there would have been no need for him to down his beer like that. Ok buddy, you think she's not gonna smell the alcohol on your breath? Newsflash: she is pregnant. Pregnant women have a superhuman sense of smell. She WILL know.

And on the subject of things that SHOULD be more important than his girlfriend not finding out about his drinking...Oh, you're gonna drive around to the back and chug your beer IN PLAIN SIGHT OF THE STORE OWNER? There's really nowhere to go after that than to drive off to see your girlfriend, is there? He's lucky you didn't call the cops and have him busted for drunk driving.

Happened to me as I was helping set up the pharmacy in a brand new drug store. People trying to drop off prescriptions 2 weeks before we would open. They had to force the doors open, walk past contractors, people stocking shelves, the guys installing said shelving...

Um, yeah, I did that once. The doors were open, I didn't see any "coming soon" signs, and there were people in the store, so I assumed that it was open. Looked around for a bit and there was still a bunch of stuff in boxes. Someone came up and asked where my nametag was. That's when it finally hit me that they were just training the new employees, so I apologized and hurried out of the store.

While working in a mall at a music store, I had a police officer approach me and tell me that there had been a bomb threat called in to the mall and they were treating it seriously. I was told to calmly and quickly get everyone in the store to evacuate. I had idiots bringing their cds to the registers after they were told THERE'S A BOMB IN THE MALL. PLEASE LEAVE NOW. Um...no moron, if the store is here tomorrow, you can buy your Pearl Jam cd then.

A car crashed into my store once, clean through an emergency exit, scraped a whole aisle off the ground and stopped 40 feet in. It hit one girl, and she laid on he floor, unconscious, bleeding out. I had just gotten off but was there when it happened, dropped my skateboard and started helping. (Clearing all the debri out of the way).
As i'm throwing boxes of speakers out of the way, this guy walks over to the turned over aisle, and tries to remove one of the locked in. Were trying to clear the area of spectators, and this asshole just starts trying to rip off $10 headphones.
He needed them that badly.

Settling up our store in its new location, we were only moving 1 block down the street so moved everything down on trolleys or still on the gondolas.
Because of this we kept the doors unlocked thinking nobody would be stupid enough to think the store piled high with boxes, merch everywhere, builders still putting up shelving, no signage etc was open.....
Apparently I grossly underestimated the stupidity of many people, especially the complete cockwomble who wandered in and started looking through boxes thinking we were some sort of discount store!

I worked in a library that was closed over the summer for renovation. There were signs on the doors that said in big, bold, red letters: STOP The library is CLOSED. FOR YOUR SAFETY, do NOT enter." We kept the doors unlocked because not all of the employees had a key and it was a hassle to have to run upstairs to the main office of the building to get one every time you just wanted to go to the bathroom or were coming in for your shift. I had to chase one guy out of the library. He acknowledged that he saw the sign and knew the library was closed, but came in anyway. I was following him out the door and he chuckled, "what, you have to escort me out?" And I just replied, "no, I'm going to lock the door behind you after you leave." To which he responded, "Fair enough." Wtf?? Fair enough, that we no longer can assume that big bold signs warning of the dangers of entering a construction zone aren't enough to keep idiots out?

Honestly, there should be effective exemptions to duty-of-care laws so that if you lock the doors and put signs up then your business is off the hook in terms of responsibility.

I remember a story here from a long while back where a woman was told repeatedly to control her child, who was being a danger to themselves. She refused, right up until the moment when the employee said that the store hereby absolved themselves of any resulting medical expenses and compensation from any resulting injuries. Then she put the child under control.

There's a big chunk of the population who act out in public because they figure there will be a payday in it for them, even if they don't consciously realise why they're doing it.

Are there not already such exemptions in place? I would think that willfully entering somewhere dangerous, like a clearly marked construction zone, and getting injured as a result of such entry would absolve any business of duty-of-care.

I work at an older store, and as such the power occasionally goes out. When it does, all or computer demos, (computer store) air, and lights go out. Battery backup just keeps the register and front register lights going. We take the batteries out of the laptops so they are not stolen.

One day it went out, the whole block was out, the store was completely dark, and we were using flashlights to walk customers around. Another employee and I walk a customer to the back of the store to look at laptops. The customer is looking at laptops, mentioning that it's hard to see because it's so dark and then asks us to turn on a computer so he can see it. I remind him we have no power so we can't turn it on. This sets him off and he starts yelling asking how he is supposed to buy a computer if he can't see it.

I work in the food court and among the many many stories I have, this is one of the ones that relates. I'm closing up, lights are off, old as dirt registers printing reports and I'm off to the side counting the drawer. All of the sudden a larger male materializes at the register and seems upset that I had ignored him for however many nanoseconds he had stood there. I inform him in a polite but stern tone that we are closed, which he doesn't like. He starts getting more flustered and eventually asks "so because you're closed you won't serve me?" I inform him that, yes this is indeed the situation he is in.

People give themselves permission with some phrase they hear instead of what they are being told. They hear just enough to tell themselves "yeah but the rules don't apply to me."
I had a customer scream at me once "But I get more!" I wanted to explain to him that there is no first class. There is only one stretcher in this thing and only one hospital to go to.

At work, in my state, i LEGALLY can NOT sell a customer alcohol past 11PM. When the doors are locked and the registers are printing end pf day receipts, it means you will not be drinking. People have ripped our doors out of the frame, they curse, give me the finger, bang on the glass, or stare in disbelief when they take too long to get up to the register and I can not sell to then.

I'm sorry but you had from 8:30 in the fucking morning until 11PM at night to buy your booze. Plan the fuck ahead and don't tell me I have to sell to you. I don't, I can't, and now I certainly wouldn't if I could..

Yup - my store was having a fire drill, all staff were standing outside, lights off, doors locked and closed, and 2 customers go up to our door, try to open them (the alarms are still going off) and turn to me and say "you open?"

I run a petrol station. It closes at 10pm, when it is nice and dark outside. We turn off all the outside lights and do a quick shift end on the tills that takes 5-10 minutes, generally we only bother to leave the lights over the till area on. From the outside, it is very bloody obvious that the plce is closed.

At least 3 times a week we get someone knock on the door (if we have already locked, if not they just walk in and start browsing). Sir, we are closed now.

"Oh but i just need some milk!"

We are closed, the tills are closed, the pumps are closed and the door is closed.

Store opens at noon on Sundays. I would come in at 11:30 to feed animals/open register. There was always one person who would follow me into the COMPLETELY DARK STORE. Then, of course, ask me if we were open,
I don't understand to this day.

I don't understand it! My store opens at 11 and customers are always yanking at the door before even though the store hours are three feet from where they're pulling. When I open the door for employees they try to walk in.
Same thing at night. Lights off, doors locked... "Are you already closed?" It's black outside and 15 minutes past our closing time, why would you say 'closed already.'

A few months ago, there was a fire in the restaurant where I work. A week after the fire we had an employee meeting to discuss what was gonna happen over the coming weeks and whatnot....the driveway was partially blocked with cones and the sign outside said very clearly "closed due to fire see you soon" but we still had customers pull in thinking we were open.

Reminds me of a time when I was working at a store. I was opening that morning (2nd half of clopening, ugh) and as such was there significantly early. We're talking, 1 hour before the store opens. We had a door that was unlocked but unpowered, so the employees could force it open and get into the store to open. Of course there is no security monitoring the door, right? The lights were mostly off, the registers were off, the muzak was thankfully off, everything was off. The grates were down in front of the main doors.

So as I'm carrying a cash bag over to one of the registers to set it up for the day, what do I see but a customer perusing the wares! I locked the cash bag in the till and went over to inform him that the store was closed and wouldn't be open for another 45 minutes and that he would have to wait outside. He dismissed me right away, saying that he just wanted to look around.

And then I called my manager, who was annoyed that I was calling him during opening, and told me to just leave the guy alone.

Guess what, he wanted to buy stuff before the store opened, and wasn't happy that I wouldn't sell him anything with the registers off.

Well yeah. All of those things comment on a persons personality. Fat is a physical attribute. It's just how you can say someone was a fuckwit so of course they tried to steal headphones but you can't replace fuckwit with black. Or Asian. Or any other physical attribute.

I worked at a furniture store that was in an outdoor mall. So all the stores faced the street and people could just walk around if they wanted to cause there were restaurants that stayed open til bar close. We closed at 9pm. One night we forgot to lock the door. At 9:30pm someone opens the door and starts walking in.Registers are off, lights are off, paperwork is sprawled over the desk, there's a person vacuuming. We inform them that we are closed and they will have to come back the next day.
Woman: Even if I'm buying today?
Me: Yes, sorry, you'll have to come back tomorrow.
Woman: But I'm buying today!
Me: Everything is shut off, I can't sell you anything. You'll have to come back tomorrow
Woman: You just lost a sale.

I think the description of the subjects of one's story is a fairly standard writing device, as it helps the reader better picture the scene.

As well, their weight is relevant as they have to squeeze past the machine blocking the doorway. The "squeeze" adds humor to the story and by its unusual nature (it's not normal to have to squeeze past a machine to shop!) helps to illustrate the stupidity of the couple. I believe the anecdote would indeed be altered without this information.

Calling them fatties is indeed uncalled for, but once we've established a customer is worthy of hate any and all imperfections they exhibit become fodder for our fun-making here at /r/TalesFromRetail.

As well, their weight is relevant as they have to squeeze past the machine blocking the doorway. The "squeeze" adds humor to the story and by its unusual nature (it's not normal to have to squeeze past a machine to shop!) helps to illustrate the stupidity of the couple. I believe the anecdote would indeed be altered without this information.

For argument's sake, we are not aware of the size of the machinery, nor the size of the doors. OP could have just said the couple had to squeeze to enter (if that was so important), and we would have been able to imagine the scene just as much.
Final effect would have been just the same.

That argument ignores the first point, that descriptors help us visualize OP's story. When relating a true story, storytellers usually wish their audiences to share the same experience they had, to see it through their eyes. The weight of the customers was part of OP's experience. OP states that they only had to squeeze because they were overweight. Why bother to conceal that they are? I'd much rather take issue with the "fatties" label.

Being overweight doesn't automatically correlate to the amount of of food ingested, that's for one. If you do a minimal amount of research you will find that it is well documented.

Secondly, morbid obesity is a result of multi-factorial circumstances, a lot of them being psychological/emotional, and even sometimes bio-chemical.
I said sometimes. Of course that's not in all cases.

Being one not to shy away from an argument (grin), Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) affects approximately one out of every 12,000-15,000 people, so it's highly unlikely that said fatties were afflicted with anything other than self-indulgence.

we are not aware of the size of the machinery, nor the size of the doors.

well considering that OP said that they had to "open them nice and wide" so we can certainly assume that the cherry picker needed a lot of room to manoeuvre and fit through the doors with enough room to not cause damage

Yes it was only to clarify how ridiculous it was that they tried to get through the door. I was not making derogatory remarks about them, just stating the fact. They were overweight. Where I live, fatties is not really classed as a hugely offensive word. But I'm sorry it offended you, that was not my intention.

well considering how OP describe that the customers came in at same time as the cherry picker being half way through the doors and that there wasn't much room between door frame and cherry picker, so it would have been somewhat of a struggle to get through rather than just slipping into the store